1:05 p.m., Nov. 12, 2008----Every fall, over the weekend before Halloween, members of the University of Delaware's Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity make their own door-to-door visits to surrounding neighborhoods asking for handouts. This year, those undisguised requests netted a truckload of food for Emmaus House, a Newark, Del., charity that restabilizes homeless families.

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Part of the chapter's local effort for the North American Food Drive, the national fraternity's philanthropic cause, the campaign this year collected the equivalent of 9,316 pounds of food (1,700 pounds of nonperishable food and $1,372--convertible to 7,616 pounds of food) in donations for Emmaus House, which was chosen by the fraternity as the local beneficiary.

“We chose because it has families with children,” said Dan Fitzgerald, a junior business major from Lewes, Del., and vice president of Lambda Chi Alpha who, along with approximately 45 other members of the fraternity, canvassed neighborhoods along West Main Street and New London Road in Newark for food donations.

“We also chose Emmaus House because we worked with them last year and got a very good feeling from it,” Fitzgerald said. “We went down into the basement there to drop off the food, and it was clear that the donations really had an impact. It's a smaller-scale charity and we could tell that the food made a difference.”

Efforts to pull the drive off successfully, besides rounding up donations last weekend, also included multiple trips to area grocery stores for durable paper bags and days of coordinated planning. A friendly flyer explaining the effort was affixed to bags that were distributed house-to-house on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 25-26. The same diligence went into collecting, sorting, packing the donations, thanking the donors and delivering the food.

Food donations also were rounded up from other Greek organizations on campus, with a $100 prize for the most generous contribution.

Additionally, Fitzgerald said, a PayPal account was set up during the campaign for the purpose of converting monetary donations into food purchases by Emmaus House staff and residents. Professors, mentors, friends, family members and UD Lambda Chi Alpha alumni were solicited by e-mail for cash donations, which were delivered in the form of a $1,372 check to Emmaus House.

“This effort would have been impossible without all the support and donations,” Fitzgerald said. “Special thanks, on behalf of all UD's Lambda Chi Alpha members, go out to the following fraternity and sorority chapters at UD: Alpha Sigma Alpha, Kappa Alpha Theta, Alpha Epsilon Phi, and Alpha Sigma Iota; as well as to Endless Summer Tans on Elkton Road.”

Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photo by Ambre Alexander